[mythtv-users] Any Debian / Mythtv / Nvidia users here?

[Ozzy Lash]

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 10:51 PM, Eric Sharkey <eric at lisaneric.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 3:53 PM, stuart <stuart at xnet.com> wrote:
>> Hi...
>>
>> I've done a bad thing.  I updated my Debian Mythtv boxes with out
>> checking if there were any Nvidia drivers available.  Now both mythtv
>> boxes are broke.
>>
>> I'm not sure where the hold up is (maybe someone can say), but from
>> mining the internet it appears this problem started about the 11th of
>> February (2011) and is centred around not having proprietary Nvidia
>> drivers available (yet).
>>
>> So, I'm asking here what people running Debian Mythtv boxes do.  (Other
>> then avoid updates like the plague.)
>
> I've been running MythTV on Debian unstable since 2004 and haven't had
> any serious problems with updates in all that time, although I haven't
> attempted an update since Feb 11th.
>
> I can see nvidia-kernel-dkms packages are available in stable,
> unstable, and experimental, so I'm not sure why you're saying they're
> not available.  Which Debian release are you running and with what
> kernel package?
>

I think the issue is that a new version of X11 was brought into
unstable, and the version of the nvidia driver in unstable doesn't
support the newer X11.  There is a set of newer nvidia packages in
experimental which work. (See
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=612956 )

I'm not sure how Rick got into this situation by updating.  It seems
that it should of at least told him that it was going to remove the
nvidia driver.  I noticed the issue about a week ago when I was
playing around with making a PXE boot frontend.  I couldn't install
nvidia-glx, and had to look around until I found that bug report.

I do find that about the only time Debian unstable is truly unstable
is for a month or two after a new stable release.  They tend to hold
back changes from unstable for the last several months before a
release, and then bring in a lot of new stuff.

My strategy for using mythtv and Debain unstable is: When I hear that
a new version of myth is about to be released, I update my debian
boxes and deal with any issues before the new Myth is released.  Then
I wait for a while after the myth release, and update again until I
get everything working.  Then I leave it until I hear about a new myth
release.